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Apologies if someone has already posted this story from The New York Times:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/morgan-library-to-digitize-...

I'm not entirely thrilled with the Morgan's web interface to view digitized documents. Kind of like looking through a keyhole.

considered to be the first significant printed book in the West

Why doesn’t anyone ever fact check that and realize that Gutenberg printed multiple editions of Donatus before he printed the bible?

what's donatus?

Donatus was a grammarian who wrote Latin grammar primers. A little dull now, but his work was quite important for teaching Matin grammar to people so they could read things like Latin bibles.

Specifically, the Donatus work is his Ars Minor.

oh, cool, thanks!

maybe in the eyes of the author Ars Minor is not significant?

The text does say "the first significant printed book in the West"... I'm not saying that a survey of Latin grammar is more or less significant than the Christian bible, mind you, but the journalist seems to have done her research. :-)

If someone were to ask me which of these two books has had more influence in Western history, I would have to say it was the Christian bible. Not to mention the fact that thanks to Gutenberg it could be mechanically reproduced. That changed things, too.